OP-ED: Fudging the numbers

India is an example of what happens when politics is everything

Earlier this week on June 15, the academic and author Chinmay Tumbe posted some alarming findings on Twitter. He wrote: “We now have decent estimates of excess mortality for [the] first five months of 2021 for 4 large states (Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka) comprising around 300 million people and 21% of the Indian population. Excess mortality in these 4 large states exceeds 500K compared to 46K reported Covid deaths.”